A $200 million gift promotes alternative therapies at a California medical school — and critics recoil
LOS ANGELES — When billionaires Susan and Henry Samueli this week announced a $200 million donation to the University of California, Irvine to launch a new health program dedicated to integrative medicine, they drew a standing ovation and glowing coverage.
But for those who have been watching the steady creep of unproven therapies into mainstream medicine, the announcement didn’t go over quite as well.
“This is ultimately a very bad thing,” said Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University and longtime critic of alternative therapies. “It’s putting emphasis and the imprimatur of a university on things that have been discarded as medical fraud for 50 years.”
University of Alberta health law professor Tim Caulfield, who has made his name , has raised red flags about the — from “energy
